


Those Old Beifong Family Values

by toastweasel



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Lin is an old lady falling apart and I love it, Su is an instagram mommy wine vlogger and also a gremin of a younger sister, and you cannot convince me otherwise, i just love these two so much and want them to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26799562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: Lin and Suyin visit their grandfather's old Beifong Family Republic City estate. Su is a little shit, because of course she is.A little bit of sister reconciliation. Set Post Season 3.
Relationships: Lin Beifong & Suyin Beifong, background Kyalin, because would it be me if I didnt write about Kyalin
Comments: 20
Kudos: 136





	Those Old Beifong Family Values

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense, I was left alone with my laptop, a whole mess of Beifong Family Feels, and absolutely no supervision for an hour and a half.
> 
> Thank you to Linguini for the beta. <3

The Beifong’s Republic City Estate is old.

Not that old, technically, but compared to most of the buildings in Republic City, it’s practically archaic. Technically, the house is only fifteen or so years older than Lin, but as she stands outside the high whitewashed walls and stares at the flying boar inscribed in the big wooden gates, it feels like a lifetime.

“Good morning, Lin,” says her sister’s familiar voice, and she turns to see Suyin walking down the street. She’s in her usual tunic, but she has a long forest green coat with metal accents thrown over the ensemble in deference to the grey sky and the autumn chill.

“Su.”

“Do you still have a key to this old place?” Su asks in wonder as she comes to stand beside her. “I haven’t been here since we were kids.”

Lin holds up the key she had been keeping in her pocket. “I’ve been the one renting it out, haven’t I?”

“Well, then what are we standing around here waiting for? Let’s go inside.”

They unlock the gates and push the heavy, groaning things open to reveal the small garden forecourt that precedes the main house. Su looks at the fish in the pond, then at the shrubs and flowers along the path, and frowns. Lin can tell the landscaping is not to her tastes.

“They’ve redecorated.”

“I let the tenants do what they want,” Lin replies as she locks the gates behind them. “Our grandparents have been dead for two decades, it’s not like they have opinions anymore.”

Su sighs. “Well you could have at least consulted me.”

“Ah yes,” Lin says drolly over her shoulder, pushing past her sister to unlock the inner doors. “You mean during those thirty years we didn’t speak to one another?”

Su rolls her eyes. Lin pushes the sliding doors open and they step through them into the covered portico. Su steps up to one of the columns and rubs the old, weathered red paint under one thumb. “These used to be green.”

“Last round of tenants were Fire Nation dignitaries.”

Su looks pensive. “You said they moved out because of Harmonic Convergence?”

“Mmm. Evacuated and didn’t come back.”

Her sister frowns as she lets her eyes trace the center court, marking the changes in the wood patterns on the screen doors, the installed electric light sconces, the altered column capitals. “…But they didn’t change the courtyard.”

“No,” Lin says quietly as she wanders across to the first guest cell, boots scraping against the wooden decking before she tests the door with a single finger. “That stays.”

“You? Sentimental about this old place?” Su laughs as she steps onto the hardpacked earth of the courtyard. Lin turns and watches as her younger sister scrapes a foot across the earth in the habitual first movement of a form, muscle memory no doubt brought on by the location and the feeling of the earth under her boots. “Mom handed us our asses here. I thought it would be the first thing to go.”

Lin scoffs and hops down to join her, wincing as the jump jars her knees. “And Mom would hand us our asses again if it changed.”

A smile tugs on Su’s lips. “You’re probably right.”

“I’m _probably_ right? You know I’m right.”

Lin feels the earth dip, separate, and groan just before Su throws something. She whips out a hand and catches the fist-size rock from midair. She stares at Su, who has the same mischievous look on her face she had when she was six and Lin was twelve and they sparred here on the weekends and after school.

“Oh, you really wanna do this, kid?” Lin asks, letting the dry humor bleed into her voice as she uses earthbending to crumble the rock into dust between her fingers.

“What do you say, Lin?” Su says with a wink, and kicks up another rock, bigger this time, about the size of her head. “Like old times.”

Lin doesn’t get a chance to answer before Su tosses it at her. She roots herself in the ground and cleaves the dirt in two; rubble rains down to either side of her, pock-marking the packed ground with their impact. “Spirits, you’re a little shit!”

Su laughs in delight. “Never stopped! Now c’mon, Lin, let’s have some fun.”

“I’m too old for fun,” Lin growls, but twists her feet into the ground and plunges her hands in after. Su jumps just in time to avoid the wave of earth that quakes under her feet.

They haven’t sparred together in literal decades, but it’s no surprise to Lin she still knows Su’s movements like the back of her own hand. She’d counted on it at Laghima’s Peak, had used it to try to press her advantage in Su’s garden, but now as they trade rocks and shakes and quick jabs fo stone, _here in_ the courtyard where Toph taught them to bend the earth they now have mastery over, it feels different.

Suddenly she’s ten, and Su is four, and Lin is staring daggers at a coin as Toph teaches Su the proper way to stomp up a rock.

Suddenly she’s sixteen, and Su is ten, and she’s fighting Su with cables with Toph “watching” carefully from the stairs.

Suddenly she’s nineteen, and Su’s fifteen, and they are taking out their frustrations towards each other in their makeshift arena until they break grandpa’s pot and Toph yells at them.

Lin ducks back to avoid a blow; her hip twinges as a rock whistles neatly past her nose, and she is brought back, startled, to the present.

“Almost got you that time, Lin,” Su taunts playfully, just like they did when they were kids, and Lin decides her sister has had enough fun. She pulls the ties of her coat open and throws it to the side, where it lands in a crumpled heap of fabric.

“Getting serious now?”

Lin rolls her eyes at her sister’s teasing and settles into a proper stance. “We never did finish our fight in your garden.”

Su raises an eyebrow. “I thought we were past that.”

“We are,” Lin says, then stomps up a boulder and roundhouses it towards Su with such force her little sister has only milliseconds to respond. But just like Lin thought she would, she throws up a wall, then punches out a few clods of dirt that Lin easily avoids.

Just like Toph taught them.

When her little sister disintegrates her defenses, Lin counts it as a minor victory that Su’s hair is a bit out of place. Su cocks a hip and puts a hand there, mockingly. “Are you trying to distract me, Lin?”

“Is it working?”

Su laughs, then tugs her own coat off and throws it towards the same spot Lin threw hers, then settles into her own stance. “Okay. First hit buys dinner.”

“That will be you,” Lin says cockily. “No landscape for you to use defensively.”

“And we’re in too confined a space for you to hurl yourself and every boulder you can bend,” Su replies with a little smile. “Mom would kill us if we broke the house.”

“She won’t be the one footing the bill,” the elder sister grunts as she heaves a rock at Su. She dodges gracefully, pops up a wall with ease, then fires little pebble-like bullets at her from its surface. Lin skitters back, hopping on the balls of her feet, her bad hip complaining the whole way.

 _That’s_ the one thing that doesn’t feel like she’s a kid anymore.

She’s still very much fifty-one, her body battered by years on the job and more injuries than Lin can even count anymore. His hip hurts, and so does her bad shoulder, and her knees.

The earth shifts under her feet, first to the left and then to the right, and she stumbles; Su sinks the ground under her bad knee and Lin growls as she hits the ground. She flips, kicks up a rock, and hurls it at Su, but she sidesteps it at the last minutes.

The rock whistles right through the circular threshold and punches a hole through the main wall of the forecourt with a resounding crash.

Both women stop on a dime, frozen in their stances, and look at each other. Their eyes meet, and tense silence passes between them, before Su offers up a cheeky, “At least it wasn’t Grandpa’s vase.”

That dissolves both of them into laughter, and _damn_ it feels good to laugh with Su’s snark.

Lin hauls herself to her feet and brushes down her slacks with a sardonic grin. “Raincheck?”

“Sure,” Su says, and with a stomp of her feet she levels the ground back to its original hard pack. “Besides, I don’t fight the infirm.”

“Come back to me when you hit fifty and then tell me how that ankle you broke when you were eleven feels.”

Her younger sister rolls her eyes and sits on the stairs instead, the same steps Toph used to ‘watch’ them from when they were kids. Lin joins her with a repressed groan, stretching out her bad leg down the stairs to rest the heel of her foot on the bottom step, and they fall into companionable silence.

“I need to get you in the ring with my boys,” Su finally says, and gives her a gentle bump to the shoulder with her own. “They know all my moves, but I’m sure you’d be able to teach them a thing or two.”

Lin scoffs fondly and leans back on her elbow. “They’re all of what, fifteen? Bring them on.”

“They’ve invented Power Disc all by themselves!”

“Inventing a game and sparring a master are two separate things.”

Su sighs and points to the hole in the forecourt wall. “You going to fix that?”

Lin waves her off with an easy hand. “When we leave. It’ll take three seconds.”

“Tell me how much the whitewasher charges and I’ll pay the bill,” Su tells her, and settles on her elbow on the opposite side. “Why’d you bring me here, anyway, Lin? It can’t have been to throw rocks at each other and reminisce about the past.”

It’s Lin’s turn to sigh now. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her key, then holds it up for Su. “You’re in the city advising President Raiko about the Earth Kingdom more than you’re not now. Might as well stay here instead of blowing your budget at the Four Seasons.”

Su blinks in surprise. “Really?”

Lin shrugs. “Not like I’m using it.”

“But what about your tenants?”

Lin shrugs again. “It’s not like I need the money.”

Su regards her softly, then takes the key and turns it over in her fingers quietly. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” She pauses. “Just tell me when you’re coming.”

“Why, you using this place as a secret sex getaway?” Su asks sarcastically. “Press has too much of a watch on your apartment so you come here for your secret trysts now that you don’t have any tenants clogging up the place?”

Lin looks away from Su, and finds despite herself that her eyes flick unconsciously towards the doors of the master suite.

Su tracks the movement and gasps. 

“Lin, I was kidding!” She leans forward and whacks Lin across the chest with the back of her hand. “I was kidding but you’re… Oh spirits, _Lin_. Who?”

“None of your business,” she mumbles out.

“Who!” Su asks, budging up into her personal space the way Lin has always hated. “Tell me! I _will_ find out, Lin!”

She shoves her away. “Oh fuck off, Suyin.”

Her sister is not perturbed. “It’s Kya, isn’t it?”

Lin feels the heat grow in her cheeks. “What?! That’s ridiculous. Who gave you that idea?”

“I knew it!” Su crows excitedly. “It _is_ Kya!”

Lin presses her lips together and says nothing.

“When did you start seeing her? I’m hoping it was after Tenzin. How long have you two been together? Have you _really_ —”

 _“Su,”_ she interrupts desperately, her voice somewhere between a whine and a growl.

Su tilts her head in acknowledgement of her misstep, and her eyes soften as she pulls back, out of her personal space.

“Sorry,” she says softly. “You’ve always liked your privacy.”

“I have,” Lin agrees gruffly, and shifts so she’s sitting up instead of lounging on her side. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“That you’ve found happiness? Oh, Lin, of course not.”

Lin looks over at her sister, and finds her smiling.

“You are happy, right?” Su asks, and her hand finds Lin’s knee. “With Kya?”

She hesitates, then nods.

“Then that’s all I care about.” Su slips the key Lin gave her in her pocket and stands, bending the dust out of her clothes with a quick stomp and a hand gesture. Then she holds out her hand to her elder sister. “Enough about all that. Plenty to talk about later. But for now, show me the changes you’ve made around this place.”

“Why?” Lin asks dryly, but takes her hand. “So you can critique the nonexistent design?”

Su gives her a pitying look as she tugs Lin upright. “Lin, your design sense has always left more than a little to be desired.”

“I’ll have you know my apartment is very modern.”

“Is it? Well I haven’t been inside it, so I wouldn’t know. You’ll have to show me,” Su says airily as they walk up the stairs towards the old family quarters. “I’ll bring Bataar Sr. sometime when I come to advise the president. If Kya’s in town, we can have dinner. It will be fun.”

Lin considers the idea of having a double date with her little sister and can’t bring herself to actually hate the idea.

“We’ll see,” she says, but as she’s sticking her hands in the pockets of her slacks and drifting after Su towards the door she’s already compiling a letter to Kya in her head.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked what you read, please consider leaving a review. :)


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